D3VbWest Top 25 (9/13/21)

Here are my rankings for the second week of the season. I will also have a West Region Top 8 at the end of this article. I am moving the Points/Set information to its own article later in the week (or even today). My West Top 8 is usually based on the NCAA selection criteria but it’s not this week. I started on the Watch List, which is my worksheet for this effort, but got caught up on using the best form of Strength of Schedule (long story not worth reading). Remember that a key result is a win over a team in the Top 25 or one that I’m considering for my Top 25. All losses are key results.

My rank, (my Week 1 rank, AVCA rank), record, key results last week1 (1, 2T) Johns Hopkins 6-0; W: Virginia Wesleyan, Muskingum. 2 (9, 6) Claremont-M-S 7-0; W: WashU, Trinity, Emory. 3 (2, 1) Trinity 6-1; W: Emory; L: CMS. 4 (7, 11) Ohio Northern 8-0; W: IWU. 5 (12, 19) UW-Whitewater 5-0; W: Bethel, Carthage. 6 (NR, NR) Wartburg 8-0; W: Augsburg, UW-Eau Claire. 7 (5, 13) UW-Eau Claire 8-1; W: Saint Benedict, Augsburg; L: Wartburg. 8 (11, 8) Calvin 8-1; W: Wittenberg, Denison. 9 (4, 7) Hope 5-1; W: Denison; L: Wittenberg. 10 (6, 4) Colorado College 8-0; W: None. 11 (10, 10) Berry 5-0; W: None. 12 (13, 16) Chicago 8-1; W: IWU, Transylvania, Concordia (WI). 13 (17, 17) Northwestern 6-1; W: UW-La Crosse. 14 (23, NR) Bethel 7-2; W: UW-Platteville, Carthage; L: UW-Whitewater. 15 (18, NR) Mount St. Joseph 8-1; W: None. 16 (15, 12) Mary Hardin-Baylor 7-0; W: None. 17 (NR, NR) Concordia (WI) 3-1; W: Millikin, Transylvania; L: Chicago. 18 (3, 5) Carthage 6-3; W: None, L: Bethel, UW-Platteville, UW-Whitewater. 19 (8, 2T) Emory 6-2; W: Saint Benedict; L: Trinity, CMS. 20 (19, 15) Millikin 5-1; W: Transylvania; L: Concordia (WI). 21 (NR, NR) Southwestern 7-0; W: UT-Dallas, Carnegie Mellon. 22 (NR, NR) MIT 7-0; W: Bowdoin. 23 (22, 23) Babson 7-0; W: None. 24 (NR, 18) WashU 6-2; W: Saint Benedict; L: CMS. 25 (NR, NR) UC Santa Cruz 8-1; W: Chapman. Dropped Out: Transylvania (14), Juniata (16), Augsburg (20), Virginia Wesleyan (21), Whitworth (24), Centre (25)

I had six teams drop from my rankings from last week. I’m big on reevaluating the entire list from scratch especially early in the season so not an unexpected number. Transy took it on the chin this week and their wins look less impressive with two weeks of results. Junita didn’t do anything wrong but haven’t really proved themselves so far. When you are ranked in the 20s and you slip up then you have to be prepared to pay the price. I struggled with Carthage, Emory, Millikin and the New England schools but I can’t hate on everyone!

As for the chosen ones, if you are hating on Johns Hopkins at this point then you are just a hater. Nothing I can do about that. CMS had maybe one of the best weekends you can possibly have, taking down 1, 2 and 18. It won’t surprise me if they are the number one team overall tomorrow. Trinity looked really good from what I’ve witness this season and I can’t penalize them too much for that CMS loss. (Let me take a second and talk about the difficulty of watching teams versus only considering their records/statistics. Often the eyeballs don’t agree with the records. In the case of Trinity, they do. In the case of teams like Emory and Chicago, they don’t. I struggle with penalizing teams too much for eyeball evaluations because video streams can be misleading and I can’t do this with every team. It’s unfair. I try to find a balance but usually fail to get it right.) Ohio Northern jumps into my Top 5 with wins against Mt. St. Joseph and Wittenberg and not messing up this past week. They play in a tough conference and get Calvin, Hope and CMS later in the year so we’ll know everything we need by tournament time. Rounding out the Top 5 is Whitewater. They have some of the best wins of the season so far. Wartburg flies in to number 6 with wins over Augsburg and Eau Claire. I seriously considered them last week and they showed I was wrong to leave them out of my rankings. Calvin is back into the Top 10 just ahead of Hope. I think they play each other this year so we’ll figure this out. Colorado College slips 4 spaces after doing nothing wrong. They just haven’t played anyone so I don’t feel the need to reward them. That changes this weekend. Same goes for Berry although they dropped a spot. I struggled with Chicago (see my note above). They have to go someplace but I think both WashU and UC Santa Cruz (at the end of my rankings) beat them. Northwestern moves up and I really like that La Crosse victory. La Crosse almost made my rankings. Maybe they will be the Wartburg of Week 1. Bethel and Mount St. Joseph are nice teams. Bethel had a better week. Mary Hardin-Baylor drops a spot although they continue to be undefeated. Just no quality wins on their schedule outside of BSC. Concordia jumps into the rankings but wasn’t really impressed with them at a number 17 level (darn those eyeballs). Carthage and Emory take a big fall with their weekends results. Emory is also hurt by the eyeballs. Not sold on Millikin but I’m fine with them at 20. Southwestern jumps in at number 21. They scheduled some good teams but a number of them aren’t having their normal season. Still, they are winning and need to be rewarded. A couple of New England teams here. MIT had a nice win against Bowdoin. I struggled with WashU. Eyeballs say to move them higher but results say their best results were losses to Eau Claire and CMS (if that makes sense). I don’t worry about UAA teams telling me where they should belong once their conference gets going. I really wanted to reward the Banana Slugs who are destroying California outside of CMS, who they played tough.

Other teams on my scratch paper with a question mark over them, which means get them ranked if you can find a spot, are Tufts, Muskingum, Wittenberg (maybe…I scribbled out the ‘X’) and UW-La Crosse. A bunch more with the dreaded ‘X’ but at least they were in the running.

As a reminder, Ricky Nelson does a Top 10 each week, which you can find at his site. We share the top 3 teams in our rankings. We actually have the exact same 10 teams but in different order so pretty cool there.

For the West Region readers, I will now go through our teams. As I mentioned above, I’m working on my Watch List, which will transition this to an NCAA Selection criteria basis.

Region X Rankings (9/13/21) – (previous rank)

1. CMS (4)

2. Trinity (1)

3. Colorado College (3)

4. Mary Hardin-Baylor (6)

5. Southwestern (7)

6. UC Santa Cruz (8)

7. George Fox (NR)

8. Pomona-Pitzer (NR)

Dropped Out: Chapman (3) and Whitworth (5)

The difficulties of Region X are reflected in these rankings. Strong top 3 in my mind and the next 3 are all pretty even but a tier below. George Fox jumps into the rankings because they really are the best of the bunch that’s left. They have wins over La Verne and Pomona-Pitzer with only one loss. Their Points/Set number is fine but nothing special but I went with results here. The 8^th spot was tough but if you read my Weekly Wrap-Up then you know that Pomona-Pitzer, by the transitive property, are the obvious choice. They are also 4-5 so that makes things interesting.

Jumping to the top, I think with the week CMS had they have to be number 1. I still have Trinity over Colorado College because I can’t penalize a team for playing a much tougher schedule. With respect to the ordering of UMHB, Southwestern and UCSC; dunno. Put them in their own tournament 9 times and they probably all win 3 times. Points/Set says UCSC is the better team.

Look for the Points/Set article at some point. Enjoy Week 3!